Business process outsourcing (BPO) company IBEX Global has invested over US$10 million in capital and infrastructure into its Jamaican operations, as it reaches 4,500 employees with the opening of a new centre in New Kingston.

On Wednesday (September 4), IBEX opened its third centre with a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony. The centre, which occupies three floors in the Courtleigh Corporate Centre, employs 700 people.

While the New Kingston centre covers approximately 25,000 square feet and has five training rooms, it is smaller than IBEX’s other two operations in the Portmore Pines Plaza, St Catherine, and Ocean Boulevard (waterfront), downtown Kingston.

Chief executive officer (CEO) Bob Dechant told the Jamaica Observer Caribbean Business Report that the New Kingston centre has already reached its maximum capacity and as a result, will be expanding to the Portmore centre for one of its major client.

“Portmore is full, the 1,500 seats there are full, the 1,000 seats at Waterfront are full and now this centre is also full,” he revealed.

Dechant added that the new centre will have two distinct operations for two Fortune 50 companies and will perform level one customer care and tracking application services.

“I’m sure you have all heard the phrase that bad things happen in threes, but as they say in the South, I am here to say, ‘that just ain’t so’; if you want to put something to stick in people’s minds, you do it in threes,” he declared.

“For IBEX, the three — Portmore, Waterfront and now New Kingston; this sticks in the mind of our competitors, because they’ve seen us come into this market in July of 2016 and grow faster in this market than anybody.”

According to the IBEX’s CEO, it’s the number one that matters in assessing the company’s performance.

“[IBEX] as a company is the fastest-growing BPO worldwide; we have been growing at 20 per cent since 2014, all organically, nothing though acquisitions and we do that because we grow with our clients because we deliver,” he said.

He added that IBEX’s Jamaican operations today, contribute approximately 20 per cent of the company’s total revenues and by the end of the fiscal year anticipates total revenues of US$400 million.

Speaking at the opening ceremony was the president of Jamaica Promotions Corporations, Diane Edwards, who indicated that Jamaica’s developing outsourcing sector “is here for the long haul”.

“IBEX is one of the foremost outsourcing company in the world, so the fact that they are here, number one, they’re growing and expanding, number two, and they’re so [enthused] about the workforce in Jamaica, all of those tick the right boxes and show that Jamaica is in the right place,” she said.

“They started out slow with a few hundred workers, now they’re close to 4,500, so that kind of growth in five years is phenomenal and is a testament to the quality of the workforce here and the enthusiasm of the young people who work for them”.

Also speaking at IBEX’s ribbon-cutting ceremony was Minister of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries Audley Shaw, who expressed his appreciation of IBEX’s initiative on what he describes as a “direct investment in people”.

“All Jamaicans want is an opportunity to grow; give them the right environment, the right leadership, the right atmosphere and inspiration and they will rise to the occasion,” he said.

NEW VISION

With the 5,000 jobs marker almost in IBEX’s grasp, the CEO now pledges to increase that number to 10,000.

“When I think about the next three or five years in us moving to 10,000 and what it would look like, we will have anchor sites in markets like Portmore and Kingston, but we will start fanning out into other markets and be able to cluster and create jobs and good opportunities,” Dechant told The Caribbean Business Report.

“I think it’s time for IBEX to start moving into new markets, not new markets that will go into [Montego Bay] but into [rural areas]; currently great people need a good employer and I think we can go into those markets,” he continued.

According to him, employee referrals account for roughly 40 per cent of IBEX’s employees through the company’s recruitment and hiring process, while about 30 per cent of employees applied to the company because of its social media platform.

“For every job that we have, we have probably 10 people who are interested in applying for the job, which is great and why we’re so bullish on the market,” Dechant said.

While IBEX provides traditional call centre services, Dechant indicated that IBEX employees are not constrained to such, as the company offers promotional opportunities into managerial positions.

“We are doing a lot of digital and marketing science; it’s a big part of our business where we have marketing scientists that are placing ads for our clients; we [then work] with clients to drive traffic to our website, which will drive calls into our centres,” he said.

“Growth means career development; that whole end to end — the digital marketing then the phone calls to the centres, we’re doing that in Portmore in large scale, so IBEX is creating a lot of jobs beyond just traditional call centres [jobs] through our digital marketing services”.

Headquartered in Washington, DC, USA, IBEX delivers onshore, near-shore, and offshore business process outsourcing solutions in seven countries across 29 sites. The company maintains a network of more than 19,000 employees and focuses on improving the customer service experience for over 70 global clients through multi-channel inbound and outbound communications in some 20 languages.